The Jump Out Boys’ creed hailed their members as a brotherhood of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who were foremost loyal to one another. The typed manifesto, found in the trunk of a patrol car, said members understood “when the line needs to be crossed and crossed back.” They branded themselves with matching skull tattoos, with a special detail reserved for those deputies who had been in a shooting: smoke curling up from a revolver. In 2013, seven members of the clandestine fraternity were fired, with top sheriff’s brass describing the initiation rites, symbolic tattoos and secret black book of shootings as “elements similar to those used to establish membership in a criminal gang.” Their tattoo “suggests street justice, and is associated with a rogue subculture,” the firing letters said.